In this paper, I critically analyze the notion that self-interest distorts moral belief-formation. This belief is widely shared among modern moral epistemologists, and in this paper, I seek to undermine this near consensus. I then offer a principle which can help us to sort cases in which self-interest distorts moral belief from cases in which it does not. As it turns out, we cannot determine whether such distortion has occurred from the armchair; rather, we must inquire into mechanisms of social (...) power and advantage before declaring that some moral position is distorted by self-interest. (shrink)

RESUMEN En el presente trabajo se aborda el proyecto político hobbesiano a la luz de las críticas realizadas por Kant en Teoría y praxis. Específicamente, se considera en detalle la objeción contra el Gobierno despótico, según la cual, el soberano sitúa la felicidad del pueblo como la principal finalidad del Estado y, por ello, acaba fomentando involuntariamente la rebelión. Al respecto, se sostendrá que el planteamiento de Hobbes en el Leviatán evade el foco de los reproches kantianos, justamente porque su (...) particular noción de felicidad impide que esta pueda ser constituida como el objetivo de la sociedad política. A su vez, se arguye que existe una sugestiva modificación terminológica con relación al De Cive, que lleva a considerar la posibilidad de que Hobbes haya prefigurado las críticas reseñadas. ABSTRACT The article addresses Hobbes' political project in the light of Kant's critique as set forth in Theory and Praxis. Specifically, it carries out a detailed discussion of the objection to despotic government, in which the sovereign establishes the happiness of the people as the main objective of the State and, consequently, ends up involuntarily fostering rebellion. In this respect, the article argues that Hobbes' formulation in Leviathan manages to circumvent Kant's reproaches precisely because its peculiar notion of happiness prevents it from being construed as the objective of political society. Likewise, we argue that there is a significant modification of terminology with respect to De Cive, which leads us to consider the possibility that Hobbes may have anticipated the objections discussed. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo se aborda el proyecto político hobbesiano a la luz de las críticas realizadas por Kant en Teoría y praxis. Específicamente, se considera en detalle la objeción contra el Gobierno despótico, según la cual, el soberano sitúa la felicidad del pueblo como la principal finalidad del Estado y, por ello, acaba fomentando involuntariamente la rebelión. Al respecto, se sostendrá que el planteamiento de Hobbes en el Leviatán evade el foco de los reproches kantianos, justamente porque su particular (...) noción de felicidad impide que esta pueda ser constituida como el objetivo de la sociedad política. A su vez, se arguye que existe una sugestiva modificación terminológica con relación al De Cive, que lleva a considerar la posibilidad de que Hobbes haya prefigurado las críticas reseñadas. (shrink)

In the introduction to the Leviathan, Hobbes famously defends the anthropological point of departure of his theory of the state by invoking the Delphic injunction ‘Know thyself!’ of which he presents a peculiar reading thereafter. In this paper, I present a reading of the anthropology of the Leviathan that takes this move seriously. In appealing to Delphic injunction, Hobbes wanted to prompt a particular way of reading his anthropology for which it is crucial that the reader relate the presented anthropological (...) views to his self-conception. The anthropology of the Leviathan is thus a kind of manual for a certain kind of self-reflection by which the reader's self-knowledge is to be improved. Furthermore, I will argue that Hobbes' interpretation of the Delphic injunction illuminates several theoretical issues relevant to the epistemology of that kind of ‘self-knowledge’ that was demanded by the Delphic injunction. While Hobbes does not solve all the epistemological problems related with the ideal appealed to by this inscription, he does provide some interesting insights into some general requirements that any epistemological account of Socratic self-knowledge has to meet. (shrink)

Starting from considering how radical Hobbes' rejection of teleology was, this paper presents a coherent reading of Hobbesian reason, as applied to the justification of political obligation, striking a more perspicuous third way between the ‘orthodox’ and the ‘revisionist’ readings. Both families of interpretations are partial to some elements of Hobbes' thought, therefore incapable of providing a coherent reading of its whole. A precise rendering of Hobbes' deontological reason allows a better hermeneutical understanding of his philosophy as well as a (...) keener appreciation of its relevance for past and present political thought. (shrink)

This article reassesses Hobbes’s place in the history of ethics based on the first systematic analysis of his various classifications of formal goodness. The good was traditionally divided into three: profitably good, pleasurably good, and morally good. Across his works, Hobbes replaced the last with pulchrum—a decidedly non-moral form of goodness on his account. I argue that Hobbes’s dismissal of moral goodness was informed by his hedonist conception of the good and accompanied by reinterpretations of right reason and natural law. (...) By dispensing moral goodness and insisting on the hedonist and relational nature of the good, Hobbes moreover recast and rendered more urgent the question of why we should be moral. Hobbes is commonly thought to have raised this question so starkly because of his general insensitivity to the demands of justice. My analysis suggests that it may also, or rather, have been due to his restrictive conception of the good. A comparison with other moral philosophers from the period—including Suárez, Gassendi, Locke, and Pufendorf—indicates how unusual Hobbes’s jettisoning of moral goodness was. (shrink)

The article revisits the originality of Hobbes's concept of happiness on the basis of Hobbes's two accounts found respectively in Thomas White's De Mundo Examined and Leviathan. It is argued that Hobbes's claim that happiness consists in the unhindered advance from one acquired good to another ought to be understood against the background of Hobbes's theory of sensation and the imagination, on the one hand, and Hobbes's doctrine of conatus, on the other. It is further claimed that the account of (...) happiness in White's De Mundo differs from that in Leviathan. In the former work, happiness is defined not as the mere progression from one good to another but as the joy/mental pleasure derived from the awareness of one's unhindered advance. The traditional claim that Hobbes is an ethical subjectivist is examined in connection with Hobbes's view of the subjectivity of happiness and the rejection of the summum bonum. Lastly, Hobbes's distinction between worldly and everlasting happiness is discussed. (shrink)

Hobbes mantiene una actitud dual respecto de la participación política en general, y de la forma democrática de gobierno, que es la universalización del impulso participativo, en particular. La teoría desarrollada en el Leviatán, de un lado, incorpora el elemento participativo como expresión eminente de la voluntad de poder, a la vez que, del otro, trata de contener sus previsibles inconveniencias mediante una adecuada comprensión del correcto diseño y manejo de la máquina del Estado. Las críticas de Hobbes al talante (...) democrático, que, desde una perspectiva contextualista, pueden ser consideradas como intervención ideológica antirrepublicana, también pueden ser estudiadas con provecho si se las ve como un corolario de su concepción de la naturaleza humana. La evidente contradicción de postular un momento inicial de máxima libertad fundadora, para luego constreñirla a la mera aceptación de las disposiciones del gobierno absoluto, más que como inconsistencia, puede verse como lúcida aprehensión de las tensiones propias de la estatalidad barroca. Se trata, entendemos, de conciliar la preeminencia del vector de soberanía con la protección de la necesidad subjetiva de participación en las diferentes instancias de ejercicio del poder. A tal efecto, el Leviatán contempla previsiones para el fortalecimiento de la actividad económica, así como para el de la autoridad de los funcionarios públicos. (shrink)

According to a common reading of Thomas Hobbes, fear is the most philosophically important passion, responsible for the founding and sustaining of the commonwealth. I argue that this common reading is incorrect by focusing on the necessary and important role of hope in human action as well as in the founding and sustaining of the commonwealth. Life in the Hobbesian commonwealth, on the reading defended in this paper, is less fearful and more hopeful than scholars have noticed.

There is widespread scholarly disagreement whether Hobbesian passions are or involve a type of cognition (i.e., imagination). This largely overlooked disagreement has implications for our understanding of Hobbesian deliberation. If passions are intrinsically cognitive, then, because Hobbesian deliberation is a series of alternating passions, deliberation would appear to be intrinsically cognitive as well. In this paper, I bring to light this overlooked disagreement and argue for a non-cognitive reading of Hobbesian passions, according to which, a passion is an appetite or (...) aversion caused by, but distinct from, an imagination of a future good or harm. (shrink)